Applegate Press Briefings

Judicial Hate Crimes Against Trump

It would almost seem that government officials are becoming more and more
convinced that they possess god-like powers.

It used
to be that our rulers limited themselves to policing our actions, punishing
evil-doers and securing a friendly environment for those doing good.

Now, as
the Wizards of Washington have evolved into more heavenly beings, they feel
qualified to judge our attitudes, our thoughts maybe even our hearts.

For
instance, take the more than year-long court battle over the three Trump Travel
Bans that just ended this summer.

Multiple
times lesser courts threw the Travel Bans out because they insisted that Trump
had made not-so-friendly campaign statements about Muslim terrorists and
consequently the Bans were “tainted with animus”.

In
other words, because Trump had a “bad” thought, his action was bad as well.

Of
course, in the end, the Supreme Court correctly ruled that as nonsense – it
didn’t matter what his attitude was, he had the authority to issue the Travel
Ban if he thought it was in the security interest of America.

Unfortunately,
four of the Supremes were of the minority opinion that the ‘animus’ behind the
Ban made it unconstitutional.

How is
possible that four of the supposedly best legal minds in the country could
believe that an exercise of executive power could be unconstitutional based
upon its motivation?

In
other words, they think that the very same Travel Ban say, enacted by Obama who
didn’t have any animus, would be constitutional but, since Trump has animus it
is unconstitutional.

This is
bizarre legal reasoning that is laughable.

This
reasoning applied to the statutory power of the legislative branch would
mandate the inquisition of the minds of every legislator to ascertain their
attitudes when passing new laws.

Every
law could be either constitutional or, unconstitutional depending upon the
mental state of those that voted for it.

I can
picture the scene now, “Ms. Pelosi, is there any chance that you possess some
animus toward conservative Christian Americans and that is why you voted to
open up the borders and allow millions of immigrants into the country who don’t
share the same values as those citizens do?”

Or,
historically, “President Roosevelt, we must rule the Declaration of War against
Japan unconstitutional because you obviously have a hatred of Japan that
motivated this action.”

Who
will judge the minds of our legislators, each and every one of them, on each
and every piece of legislation?

How can
we be a nation of laws when laws are only legitimate if based on the ‘right’
motivations?

It
would be chaos as we examine and interrogate all government officials to ferret
out their true motives.

Laws
and, executive actions, are based upon their intended effects and if they are
within the reach of action as defined in the Constitution, they are legal and
constitutional, regardless of the motives of the enactors.

Only
those possessed of god-like powers can read minds and ascertain motivations.

It’s a
risky business to try to do so and that’s why the law should only judge based
upon objective data, not imaginative fancies about what others may or may not
be thinking.

We are
in a sorry state when some of our supposedly best legal thinkers think that it
is their job to read minds and that they actually believe they can do so!

In the
end, the judges who knocked down the Travel Ban were shown to be the ones
‘tainted by animus’.